Italy Restarts American's Murder Trial

Italy's Supreme Court has agreed to reopen the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder and sexual assault of Meredith Kercher in Perugia six years ago. WSJ's Gilles Castonguay reports. Photo: Getty Images

By

Gilles Castonguay

Updated March 26, 2013 3:23 p.m. ET

MILAN—American
Amanda Knox
and her Italian former boyfriend
Raffaele Sollecito
are to face a new trial on charges of murder and sexual assault for the 2007 killing of British student
Meredith Kercher,
after Italy's highest appeals court overturned a lower-court acquittal in a case that became a media sensation.

"Our battle continues,"
Giulia Bongiorno,
a lawyer for Mr. Sollecito said in a television interview shortly after the ruling. "This has never been an easy path…but Raffaele has always had the great force of his innocence to support him."

Ms. Bongiorno said the new trial would be held in Florence, although the exact timing is unclear. Another lawyer for Mr. Sollecito, now 29 years old, said proceedings could begin late this year or early in 2014. It was also unclear whether the Florence court would order a full retrial, or examine only portions of the original ruling.

Back to Court

In a statement, Ms. Knox, 25, who wasn't in court, said she found the news "painful," adding that "the prosecution's theory of my involvement in Meredith's murder has been repeatedly revealed to be completely unfounded and unfair."

Ms. Kercher, who was a university student in the city of Perugia, was found partially clothed in a pool of blood in the apartment she shared with Ms. Knox in 2007. Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were subsequently arrested on suspicion they had stabbed her to death during a sexual assault.

The case grabbed the world media's attention, and had many Americans voicing concerns over whether Ms. Knox would be properly tried in Italy's slow, and at times complex, legal process.

Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of having murdered Ms. Kercher, and were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. But after they spent four years in jail, an appeals court acquitted the pair in October 2011. Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito maintained their innocence throughout the trials.
Rudy Guede,
an Ivory Coast national, was convicted of murdering Ms. Kercher and sentenced to 16 years in prison, having exhausted the appeals process. During the trial, he denied having a role in the murder. Ms. Kercher's family has disputed arguments that Mr. Guede acted alone.

Following the acquittal, Ms. Knox returned to her home in Seattle, while Mr. Sollecito resumed his studies in Italy. Ms. Knox has since written a book that is due to be published next month by Harper Collins, which is owned by
News Corp
.
News Corp. also publishes The Wall Street Journal.

On Tuesday, Italy's high appeals court, which rules on procedural matters and not on the merit of a case, accepted a public prosecutor's request to put Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito back on trial. Prosecutor
Luigi Riello
and Ms. Kercher's family sought to have the acquittal by the lower appeals court overturned, arguing that the motives behind the decision were contradictory.

The high court didn't reveal the reasoning for its decision, but is expected to publish a full explanation in the coming weeks.

ENLARGE

Ms. Knox after arriving in Washington from Italy in 2011.
Reuters

Francesco Maresca,
a lawyer representing the Kercher family, welcomed the ruling, saying that the 2011 acquittal had been "without any merit or detail."

Neither Ms. Knox nor Mr. Sollecito is required to appear in Florence for the next trial. Moreover, they have the right to appeal the next ruling, meaning that a final resolution of the case could take another couple of years, lawyers say.

Carlo Dalla Vedova,
a lawyer for Ms. Knox, said she was unlikely to travel to Italy for the trial and would likely appeal should she be convicted in a second trial. "She is very bitter," he said. "She thought she could put an end to this nightmare today."

An Italian prosecutor has more possibilities to appeal a ruling than exist in the U.S., thereby prolonging a case in a judicial system that already is notoriously slow.

Should the court convict Ms. Knox, Italian authorities could ask the U.S. to extradite her to serve out her sentence in Italy. However, the U.S. doesn't normally extradite its citizens to face legal action. Instead, Italy and the U.S. could agree for Ms. Knox to serve any prison time in the U.S., lawyers say.

During the trials, Ms. Knox became a highly divisive figure, depicted as a cunning she-devil in Italy and a victim of a ham-handed Italian justice system in the U.S. Critics charged that the case was based mostly on circumstantial evidence.

A turning point in the appeals trial came when an independent panel of forensic experts said that clumsy handling of the police's main evidence—a tiny amount of DNA on a knife and a bra clasp—could have allowed for it to be contaminated. The acquittal fueled sharp criticisms of the Italian justice system in Italy and abroad.

Corrections & Amplifications Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito are due to face a new trial on charges of murder and sexual assault for the 2007 killing of Ms. Kercher. A previous version of this article said Ms. Kercher was killed in 2009.

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